The panel presentation at Ed Dale’s seminar today covers Third Tribe, an interesting and evolving experiment in finding “middle ground” between the two extremes of blogging — running a personal diary as a labor of love and (the alternative) using blogging as purely a business.
In many settings, making money using a blog is considered “evil” and a violation of what some consider the purity of blogging. Even in the best case, you can be way off message if you find yourself in the other sort of blogging community.
Darren Rowse, who founded Third Tribe, started blogging as a labor of love but does make money on it and has even been the inspiration for other bloggers to do precisely that.
Lynn Terry, who Ed tells us “doesn’t open her mouth unless she get’s paid”, does indeed run her blog as a money making concern in the niche affiliate marketing space and uses blogging to build a community within a market.
Yaro Starak admits to having “crossed over to the dark side” from having started blogging as just a love and today finds that he can make money and get to blog too — the best of both words.
James Schramko, humorously presented for the purpose of stage theater as the face of evil blogging, started out in blogging with the intent to make money but joined Third Tribe and finds that it describes his position on blogging precisely. He characterizes the difference in the various communities of bloggers in terms of “how far” down the hard-selling road they go. Not everybody making money with a blog is using the full-on, in your face selling tactics that many folks outside the I.M. space presume that we all use.
Lynn finally brings up the Elephant in the room — “who are these bloggers who do not want to make money?”
Darren tries to offer up the answer but admits that he really doesn’t get it either.
I wonder … Could it be that asking this question in a room full of people that paid a grand to get there is not the right place to find the answer? 🙂
Yaro points out that Third Tribe in some sense is a clever branding move that allows people to have a tribe that makes money without being in “the evil tribe”.
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